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Monday, October 09, 2006

Back from ACEC06 in Australia

G'day mate,

What a wonderful experience, attending the ACEC Conference in Australia for the second time! Besides being among the nicest people in the world, the presenters and attendees at the conference were full of energy and ideas! There are so many great initiatives going on in Australia and many teachers willing to take a risk and try something different to impact teaching and learning using technology. (And I adopted a few things while I was there-- an addiction to their yogurt and Tim-Tams, and the phrase "No worries!"

They DO use more acronyms than we do (if that is possible!), but, by the second day I could follow along. The presentations, except for the keynotes, were 1/2 hour in length with 5 minutes between them, so it was very hard to process the material on-site. (And it was even harder for me to squish my presentation on Web 2.0 into that time slot!) I did have lots of travel time on the way home to process, and will be implementing some of the great ideas when I get back to school this week!

Some things to think about:

1. Lower the interactive whiteboards to "kid height" and set up a classroom computer and projector with the whiteboard as the monitor. This set-up allows students to easily work on group projects, and to work together on interactive learning objects and Java-based simulations.

2. The Learning Federation in Melbourne offers thousands of interactive learning objects for use by all teachers in Australia and New Zealand. I was able to see a few of them during the conference, as presenters showed how they use them in the classroom, and the creative ways in which they are used are great! I am going to make it a point to locate some similar items that we may have access to.

3. As part of the ISTE team, we were warmly welcomed by the ACEC Board and the attendees. Being the international visiting group was a different role for us, and we spread the word about the great things ISTE is doing for both the national and international communities as well as paired up our local ISTE Affiliate with an Australian ISTE Affiliate for joint student and collegial projects.

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